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Newmarket Councillors deserve a round of applause for acting decisively to bring developer Bob Forrest to book for ordering the unlawful demolition of one of the Town’s most historic properties smack bang in the heart of the downtown Heritage Conservation District.

That said, Bob Forrest got off lightly. 

Councillors agreed their negotiating strategy in a closed session meeting of the Council on 2 December 2019 which led to the decision not to prosecute:

“Town staff gathered evidence and information, including speaking with others included in the project, regarding the demolition and undertook a fulsome review and assessment of its recourse options…

“After careful consideration of past penalties imposed by the Courts under the Acts in similar situations that may provide precedent, and the Town’s objective to protect its heritage and continue to move forward with the development and revitalization of Main Street, the Town determined that it was more effective, efficient and would render the best possible achievable outcome to pursue recourse and consequences against Main Street Clock Inc. outside of legal action. Accordingly, rather than pursue prosecution under the Act, the Town sought and achieved a prosecutorial result through an agreement with Main Street Clock Inc. securing both a penalty payment and a full rebuild of the Simpson Building. The rebuild requirements will be registered on title.” 

Incomplete

Unfortunately, the report going up to councillors tomorrow (3 February 2020) doesn’t tell the whole story. (Click the link at the bottom of this blog to get to the full report.)

Astonishingly, the narrative does not formally tell us who ordered the demolition (though we know it was Forrest) nor why. The Town pulled its punches in order to get Forrest to agree to settle without going to Court.

Bob Forrest says he 

“acknowledges and regrets”

that the historic building which once housed the apothecary of the first female pharmacist in Ontario was 

“taken down without proper permissions”.

Forrest says that ultimately he was responsible. 

It’s a bit like a dog owner getting caught when his pet poops on a neighbour’s lawn. He didn’t do the deed, of course, but he accepts responsibility.

Limiting reputational damage

Cleverly, Forrest has limited the reputational damage to himself personally and to his business but he will still make millions from his project. He bought the Clock Tower (the old Federal Post Office building and the adjacent 1956 telephone exchange) for $2,340,000 in March 2011. It had been on the market for $3,275,000. 

Forrest later bought the buildings to the south of the Clock Tower (184-194 Main Street South) for $1,760,000 from Michael Bryan. In total he paid $4.1M. 

His Clock Tower property with the 1956 addition was listed for sale in November last year for close to $9M. The parcel of 188, 190 & 192 Main was listed at $1.25M and 194 Main at $1.19M. The demolished 184-186 Main Street did not have a price attached to the vacant land.

Last week, the first property to be restored and renovated, 194 Main Street South, was listed for sale at $1,299,900. (photo above)

Paying off the penalty

In the space of three months the asking price for one of Forrest’s properties had leapt by more than $100,000 – enough to pay off the Town’s penalty.

Forrest has very deep pockets and - even when added to the rebuilding costs of 184 Main Street (put at around $300,000) and the forfeiting of the Town’s grant of $100,000 for doing up the facades - the penalty doesn’t look too painful.

Town staff tell us they reviewed past penalties imposed by the Courts in similar situations. My own survey of Ontario municipalities with Heritage Conservation Districts confirms that what happened here in Newmarket was very, very unusual.

All the elements of a successful prosecution were there. Forrest knew the importance of the property he demolished – he had commissioned a Heritage Impact Assessment on it. He knew his way around the Ontario Heritage Act and he is a developer with decades of experience under his belt. His decision to order the demolition was calculated, not inadvertent.

Of course, if it had gone to Court all sorts of things could have come out in the wash – including the lamentable record of the municipality in protecting its most historic buildings. Forrest’s Main Street properties were allowed to deteriorate and visibly decay over the long years they were left empty.

So, what more is to be done?

I hope the Town will do a “lessons learned” exercise – as it did with Glenway. 

Here in Newmarket, which markets itself as an historic destination complete with a huge triumphal arch at Main and Davis telling people they are entering the historic downtown, heritage should be part of the warp and weft of policy making.

It shouldn’t be an afterthought or be left to one “heritage” planner to hold the fort with no oversight. Protecting our heritage is a matter for everyone. 

Bob Forrest is probably thanking his good fortune. That he will walk away from the chaos he created, millions in the black.

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Photo above right from Newmarket Today.

The Minutes of Settlement between the Town and Forrest's Main Street Clock Inc, dated 17 January 2020, are here.

Update on 4 February 2020: You can watch the Council debate on the settlement at 2.52 into the video.

MiaClickClick 

Details

Yesterday’s summit on gun violence convened by Toronto Mayor John Tory turned out – at least for me - to be a bit of a damp squib. 

The Mayor says the meeting didn’t focus on a handgun ban but on controlling the flow of guns coming across the border. We’ve known about the porous border for years.

We are told that of the 78 homicides in Toronto last year 44 were gun related.

But how many others were maimed and left with life changing injuries? We mourn for those who are killed but what about the living? The young woman in the prime of life, Danielle Kane, shot in the Danforth, left paralysed from the waist down. We should weep for her too – and for all the others who survive, injured and traumatised. 

Until we get details of the Federal Government’s plan to give powers to Toronto and cities like it to ban handguns we shall continue to dance around the main issue rather than confront it. We need to ban handguns.

Our new MP for Newmarket Aurora, Tony Van Bynen, believes, like me, there should be a nationwide ban. 

Unworkable and ineffective

The Toronto Star has been demanding that politicians act, describing the Government’s proposal to give cities like Toronto the powers to ban handguns as “unworkable and ineffective”. 

“The idea that individual cities can usefully impose bans on handguns defies logic…”

I have asked Mr Van Bynen to explain how the Government’s proposal will work in practice. I have also asked him to raise the issue in the Liberal caucus and seek a meeting with the Minister responsible, Bill Blair. Only last week, in Blair’s own patch in Scarborough, one man was shot in the chest and died and another was shot in the head and is in hospital with life threatening injuries. A woman was shot in the hand. This kind of brutal gun violence – which appeared at the bottom of page 4 in the Toronto Star on 26 January 2020 - is becoming normalised.

I’ve also asked our MP to table a series of Parliamentary questions (see below) and to let me know if he supports the class action lawsuit brought by victims of the Danforth shooting against gun maker Smith and Wesson. 

Elsewhere… Tony Van Bynen has been appointed to the House of Commons Health Committee. It meets this afternoon (Wednesday 29 January 2020) to elect a Chair and Vice Chair. 

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  • What estimate the Minister has made of the cost to Municipalities of (a) implementing and maintaining a local ban on handguns or (b) restricting access to handguns?
  • If the Minister will make it his policy to collect statistics on the number of people who have been left permanently disabled as a result of a handgun assault, specifying in each case the nature of the injury?
  • How many persons under the age of 18 have been (a) fatally shot and (b) wounded in each of the last 10 years by someone using a handgun?

Details

Every year the Town of Newmarket spends a small fortune hiring outside consultants to do things it says it cannot do in-house.  Perhaps the staff with skills are tied up on other work. Or the required skills aren’t available.

The Planning Department, for example, is spending over $200,000 on consultants to work on the Mulock Secondary Plan. The planners say they don’t have the “bandwidth” to do this work. They have also hired people to help design a strategy to safeguard stable residential areas from inappropriate development.

After last year’s municipal election our councillors were asked to decide their strategic priorities for the 2018-2022 Council term, again using a team of outside consultants.

Newmarket Public Library hired Pesce and Associates: 

“to complete a review of the NPL operations with the intention of determining how best to position the NPL for current and future success”. 

Why can’t the work be done in-house?

Only last week staff recommended consultants should be hired (at a cost of $100,000) to look at the possibility of redrawing ward boundaries to ensure rough parity in ward populations. There is a growing imbalance. Jane Twinney wanted to know if at least some of the work couldn’t be done in-house. 

In the event, councillors agreed to postpone the review until the next term. But what struck me most was the way our councillors recoiled at the thought of spending $100,000 on outside consultants. 

In fact, the figures show the Town spends millions every year buying in help. (The table shows the spend on consultants by area of service over the past five years.)

A quick look at the Town’s “Bid Opportunities” page shows the extent of the services bought in by the Town. Currently consultants are being sought to design recreation management software (program registrations, facility bookings and so on) and to come up with ideas on what might be done with the old Fire Hall on Main Street which has been empty for years.

Consultancy is big business

The consultancy sector across Ontario is booming as municipalities farm out work that used to be done in-house. Three years ago I warned that the Town’s institutional memory was being contracted out to the private sector. 

I blogged about the astonishing case of the Newmarket planning consultant Howard Friedman who had a long-term contract with the Town to manage its relationships with the development industry. Friedman, who was the interface between the two, became a fixture and fitting. The then Director of Planning, Rick Nethery, told councillors there was a lot of staff turnover and new people hired by the Town could not begin to match Mr Friedman with his long 18-year tenure in the job. (I don’t know if Mr Friedman still has a contract with the Town.)

The Public Interest

The best in-house staff have a clear idea of what is meant by the public interest.  

When we buy in outside help consultants may be more circumspect. There are any number of professional heritage consultants – architects and planners – whose clients are drawn from both public and private sectors. In my experience, they tailor their professional advice to their clients’ needs. And developers and municipalities often have very different perspectives on how heritage properties should be maintained, retained and adapted.

The Town’s former Chief Administrative Officer, Bob Shelton, believed going out to private consultants helped the Town to handle the peaks and troughs of a variable workload. 

Some departments are clearly under more pressure than others. It is possible to wait over a year to get a report from staff addressing issues of concern that have been raised by residents. 

So I can understand why councillors (often reluctantly) agree to buy in outside help – to take the pressure off staff.

But do we get value for money? 

An article last year in the academic journal Canadian Public Administration (One step forward, two steps back? Consultant influence on local economic development policy in Canada) tells me cities in Canada are

"increasingly outsourcing economic development policy advisory and development to private consultants"

and that

"the policy documents authored by consultants tend to be similar in style, scope and language; and from a policy perspective, there is a convergence of policy as cities are recommended the same economic development strategies."

In fact, the language used is often a straight lift with slabs of text being taken from one report and pasted into another – for a different client.

The authors analysed the economic development plans of ­­­­cities in Ontario “to identify the influence of consultants on the policies within the documents”.  They found “homogenization” of policies which are cut and pasted from one client’s plan into another’s.

What is the answer? 

When our councillors go out to the market to buy in services they should insist on originality with policies specifically tailored to Newmarket. 

And if a template has been used we should all be told about it.

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Click this link to get to the Town's Bid Opportunities website page.

Details

The Town today published the terms of a settlement with the developer, Bob Forrest, which commits him to rebuild at his expense the historic Simpson Building which he ordered to be demolished on 9 October 2019.  

Forrest’s Main Street Clock Inc is to pay $100,000 to the Town as a penalty and will forfeit the $100,000 the Town had agreed to pay to Forrest under the terms of the May 2018 agreement.

The Town is to be congratulated for bringing this whole sorry business to a conclusion.

The Mayor, John Taylor, says this is a positive outcome for the downtown:

“Our main objective is to protect our heritage and continue to move forward with the development and revitalisation of our Main Street.”

I have no doubt Taylor values the Town’s heritage and that it is important to him. We know he also wants to get the whole length of Main Street moving and alive again. And that he vowed months ago that the unlawful demolition must have consequences. The question is: are they severe enough?

"Acknowledges and regrets"

Bob Forrest says he “acknowledges and regrets” that the building which once housed the apothecary of the first female pharmacist in Ontario was “taken down without proper permissions”. What weasel words!

We know he ordered the demolition because he would need to spend an additional $100,000 to make the old building safe after years of neglect. He baulked at this and ordered: 

“Take it down.”  

Forrest will now have to rebuild the Simpson House and this is to be welcomed. However, no matter how good the reconstruction, nothing can bring back the original and that is, for many of us, a matter of great sadness.

Dose of Anthrax

Forrest has been like a dose of anthrax to the Town, evicting business tenants and boarding up the retail units for years, sterilising the heart of our only Heritage Conservation District.

He has been brought to book but my own initial feeling is that the developer got off lightly. He may suffer some fleeting reputational damage but, crucially, he is not being prosecuted. If I were a councillor I would be making the case for prosecution.

Why?

Because the demolition on 9 October 2019 wasn’t inadvertent or a mistake. It was brazen and calculated. The rubble disappeared within hours.

Forrest knew exactly what he was doing and why. 

We shall find out more about the sequence of events which led to Forrest ordering the demolition in the Report from Peter Noehammer, the Town’s Commissioner for Infrastructure and Development, which is scheduled to go to the Council on 3 February.

Unanswered questions

In the meantime there are still many unanswered questions. 

What is the timetable for completing the building works? 

What has happened to the sale of the Forrest buildings? (the land at 184-186 Main Street was removed from the sale after the building was demolished.) Will Forrest still sell or will he hang on to them? What, if anything, is left of the May 2018 agreement?

The destruction of the Simpson building in the heart of Newmarket’s historic downtown was truly calamitous. But today’s announcement will put a line under a tragic episode in the Town’s history when a developer was inadequately supervised and was essentially allowed to pursue demolition by neglect. 

Will there be a deterrent effect on other developers who tear down historic buildings and see fines and penalties as a necessary cost of doing business?

We must hope so.

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This is how Newmarket Today reports the story.

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Canada’s centre-right newspaper of record, the Globe and Mail, tells us their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Sussex can’t live in Canada so long as they are “senior members” of the Royal family.   

“If they were ordinary private citizens, plain old Harry and Meghan from Sussex, they would be welcome. But this country’s unique monarchy, and its delicate yet essential place in our constitutional system, means a royal resident – the Prince is sixth in the line of succession – is not something that Canada can allow. It breaks an unspoken constitutional taboo.”

The editorial refers to the Nickle Resolution of 1919. It was because of this resolution that the convicted fraudster Conrad Black had to renounce his Canadian citizenship to become a peer and join the House of Lords.

I am very much in favour of the Nickle Resolution. I have always been against so-called “name-changing” honours – the Sirs and the Dames and the Lords and the Ladies. 

Clearly, there must be ways for the nation to recognise extraordinary achievement and merit and valour but name-changing honours shouldn’t be part of the package. 

A small discreet lapel badge would suit me just fine.

Dump the titles

The Globe and Mail advises their Royal Highnesses to dump the titles and become, presumably, Harry Mountbatten-Windsor and Meghan Markle.

Some commentators question whether they would be entitled to settle in Canada. John Ibbitson quotes a leading Vancouver immigration lawyer who recommends the lead applicant for permanent residence should be Megham because of her previous Canadian connections. (She spent time in Toronto while filming Suits.) He suggests that Harry is a bit on the old side (at 35) and doesn’t have the skills that Canada needs.

That is a load of old tosh. Canada embraced me despite my age and obvious imperfections.

The press is now full of stories about where the Sussexes will live. I am pretty sure it won’t be Newmarket even though the Town touts itself as being one of the best places to live in Canada.

Wanyee Li from the Toronto Star’s Vancouver Bureau has come up with a list of desirable properties in British Columbia but I see one from Toronto has sneaked in. For $16.9 million Harry and Meghan could buy a place in The Bridal Path, the city’s most exclusive address.

But that would mean having that old rogue and scoundrel Lord Black of Crossharbour as a neighbour. 

Can’t see it.

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Update on 16 January 2020. From the Globe and Mail: The awkward truth about Harry and Meghan in Canada. And from the Toronto Star: Harry and Meghan are welcome, but on our terms. And from the UK's Guardian: Prince Andrew: Home Office "recommends downgrade of security".

Update on 17 January 2020: From the Globe and Mail: Conrad Black moving out of family estate as owner decides what to do with property. From the Guardian: Harry and Meghan's UK home shut up and staff moved elsewhere. From today's G&M. The Banks never miss an opportunity...  HSBC is, of course, headquartered in London (England). And on 18 January 2020 it is announced that Harry and Megan will no longer use the His/Her Royal Highness handle but stick with the less elevated Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

 

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